A Baker's Dozen of Questions and Answers

1. There are a lot of self help books out there. What's different about What's Right With You?

There are two major differences:In a sea of self-help books that continually focus on everything that's wrong with you, What's Right With You shows readers how to tap into their inner resilience and use what's right with them to change their lives. We live in a world pervaded by the unspoken attitude that we are all basically flawed, broken, incomplete, scarred or sick: we're labeled as dysfunctional, codependent, depressed, you name it. Research about change paints an entirely different picture, highlighting the second major difference of my book-it's based in science, not self serving science fiction. Contrary to popular perception and drug company ad campaigns, fifty years of research shows that positive change does not primarily emerge from examining the disorders, diseases, or dysfunctions-all the stuff that's wrong with us-that allegedly plague the masses. Change, in truth, comes from what's right with the people attempting it-their strengths, resources, ideas, and relational support-not the labels they are branded with, the special expertise of doctors or the magic methods or potions they peddle. What's Right With You gives a research validated, six-step plan for a dynamic and refreshing approach to effecting change.

2. How does change really happen?

Five decades of scientific studies indicate that the individual is the single most potent factor, contributing an impressive 40 percent of how change occurs. Think of change as your favorite pie. You are the filling. The main ingredient to any pie is the filling, be it chocolate, custard, rhubarb, or lemon. Eating a pie without filling is like trying to change without your active involvement, without your resources, abilities, and ideas. WRWY shows how to rally these inherent strengths to defeat problems. Relational support, accounting for 30 percent of how change occurs, is the crust of our pie. A supportive relationship accommodates you comfortably while allowing your resources to take center stage. The crust provides the container that allows the filling to be appreciated. Therapy provides a supportive context, but so can the important people in your life. WRWY demonstrates how to recruit such a "change partner." The pie's mouthwatering visual presentation, enticing aroma, and aroused hopes for culinary delight illustrate expectancy-a factor that contributes about 15 percent to change. What's Right With You builds on the reader's expectations by developing a plan that resonates with his or her ideas. Finally, the actual approach that is used covers only about 15 percent of how change happens, and is best understood as the meringue on the pie. The meringue enhances the appearance of the pie and embellishes its taste, but cannot stand well on its own, lest it run and lose its shape and definition. Without the rest of pie, the meringue is nothing but fluff. The approach provides the means to an end and focuses your efforts, but is meaningless without the benefit of your resources and ideas, and active application. And the approach is certainly nothing but fluff if it doesn't deliver results-if it does not help you reach your goals. WRWY not only suggests a variety of methods for change, it also shows how to monitor progress with a research-tested tool so that readers know sooner rather than later if their strategy is working-and if not, practical suggestions for immediate modifications will get them back on track.

3. So, given those factors, what is the first step toward meaningful change?

The first step is to Challenge the Killer Ds: Debunk Dysfunction and Ditch the D Detector. Diagnosing us with the Killer Ds-disease, deficits, disorders, dysfunction, disabilities-seems to dominate all discussion in mental health. In recent years there has been a deluge of diagnoses. New ones appear almost daily. However impressive they might sound, naming a problem or explaining it with a diagnosis has nothing to do with solving it. In fact, describing the struggles of living in this way gives people the message that there is something wrong with them. The Killer Ds erode your ability to confirm and affirm your strengths and natural capabilities to help yourself. They are a product of the D industry with all its self serving interests. WRWY shows readers how to discard this way of looking at themselves-how to ditch the D Detector-and how to replace the Killer Ds with the Kinder Ds: not disease, dysfunction, or disorder, but rather distress, discomfort, or dilemma.

4. What's the D Detector?

Hardly a day goes by without some mental health mogul pontificating on the sorry state of America's mental health. The key to the problem, we are told, is to educate people about the nature of mental "illness" and to de-stigmatize seeking therapeutic help. Hence, the country is now replete with offers for "free mental health check ups" like National Depression Day or National Anxiety Day. (I keep waiting for National I'm Mad At My Spouse Day and National I Don't Want To Go To Work Day.) The sheer number of these programs leaves one wondering who the real beneficiaries are of such efforts to "get out the sick." The fact that these endeavors are largely funded by drug companies and sponsored by mental health professional organizations should be telling. This endless deluge of negative propaganda has unfortunately encouraged us to acquire a special D Detector. This is not something you can buy at Radio Shack. This device is embedded deep into your psyche, implanted by the continual message that there is something wrong with us. When operating, it constrains its owner to scan self, marriage, family, and friendships continually for blips or signs of imperfection and trouble. WRWY shows readers how to abandon this way of thinking like a blind date with a born to lose tattoo.

5. What does your second step of change mean: Honor Your Heroic Self: Validate Your Struggles and Your Strengths?

I have never heard anyone say to me, "Barry, I am having these problems because I am a worthless human being with the worst of intentions and consequently I am now going to make meaningful changes in my life." Invalidation-self blame and self loathing-are just not precursors of action for most people. We have all learned, only too well, to pummel ourselves with invalidation. Sure we all have our part in the problem, but there are a lot of factors that have contributed to the situation, and maybe, just maybe, we were doing the best we could under those strenuous and tumultuous circumstances. WRWY shows readers how to validate their struggles as the confluence of many factors and to legitimize their actions and feelings without absolving them of responsibility. This is crucial step for meaningful growth because invalidation paralyzes our natural propensities to help ourselves. I am also hard pressed to remember anyone changing by putting their faults under a magnifying glass. Sure, we all have weaknesses and recognizing one's shortcomings allows a person to work on them and improve-but a little of that goes a long way! The story about what is wrong with us is greatly over told and oversold. Making permanent changes requires an appreciation of your strengths, the more heroic aspects of who you are. WRWY helps readers accomplish this.

6. How do you find your inner resources and resiliencies?

The key here is the attitude you assume regarding your inherent abilities-you must foster a determined mindfulness of the strengths and resources that you know are there. Although we often think of ourselves in black and white ways, human beings have the beautiful complexity of simultaneously possessing polar opposite characteristics. The stories of who we are have multiple sides, depending on who is recounting them and what sides are emphasized. Unfortunately, the Killer Ds have persuaded us to believe in the story of what is wrong with us as the only or best version. It is neither. Many others of survival and courage simultaneously exist-stories that portray what is right with you. Developing mindfulness about your competencies, resources, and resiliencies does not mean that you must ignore your pain or assume a Pollyanna stance. Rather, it only requires that you give voice to the whole story: the confusion and the clarity; the suffering and the endurance; the pain and the coping; the desperation and the desire. WRWY details a specific method of how to tell stories that capture our heroic selves.

7. What does your third step, "Add a Helper: Recruit a Change Partner" mean?

Relationships are the essence of humanity. We are social creatures who thrive in connection with others. A supportive and caring relationship sustains us in tough times and encourages us to bring out our best. Life is just plain easier when we have help. So is change. While it is possible to be the "Lone Changer," it is a lot easier to have a faithful companion in our ride into the sunset of transformation. Research about how people change in therapy has found over and over that the relationship is central to any change endeavor-having someone in our corner cheering us on is sometimes just what we need to get us going or help us sustain the effort required to change. The "stuff" of therapy-magic methods or pills, or the divine wisdom of the therapist-is not nearly as critical to change as the caring and support of another individual during a rocky encounter with life. WRWY shows how to chose and enlist a change partner.

8. What does it mean to "Value Your View of Change?

One of the major reasons for unsuccessful therapy, regardless of the severity of the problem or how long it had been around is because the client's own ideas are ignored. Everyone has their own philosophies about life, their beliefs about what it really takes to face challenges and make important changes. You may not realize it but you have untapped wisdom about what it will take to transform your life. This internal knowledge about how change happens, when enlisted, or when suggested methods fit these core beliefs, makes it far more likely for something positive to occur for two reasons: one because it enhances hope and the expectation of good things-we tend to feel more hopeful when a change plan resonates with our own sensibilities; and two, because people are far more persuaded by their own views than those of others. Plans emerging from or fitting with your ideas will more likely motivate you to implement them, and therefore will most likely work. Unfortunately, just like we have been convinced to blame ourselves for our misfortunes, to invalidate ourselves, most of us have been persuaded to discount our own views, insights, and wisdom and, instead, defer to the experts. The doctor knows best. or does she? Believing that another person knows what is best for you is at least partially tragic because you know your situation better than anyone else, in ways that others can never know-you alone live in your skin and your special insights from that vantage point hold the keys to achieving your goals. WRWY shows readers how to discover their personal theory of change and how that theory can provide a plan for action.

9. Describe your fifth step to change: Give Yourself a Chance: Do Something-Implement a Plan.

What's Right With You suggests a multitude of ways to address the difficult challenges of life. The common thread which unites the wide range of ideas is the application of a strategy that competes in some way with the current experience of the concern. Any plan encourages a live experiment, a competition, with the usual way of being or acting. In the actual presence of the problem, the various methods ask you to do, think, or feel something that is unlike business as usual. This is very important because when we do something different-anything different-it encourage not only altered responses in ourselves and others, but also sets the stage for new understandings. As long as the plan makes sense to you and enlists your natural strengths, it will likely get you to a better place. Any approach to address your problem is like a magnifying glass on sunny day-it brings together, focuses, and concentrates your strengths, resources, and ideas, narrows them to a point in space and time, and causes them to ignite into action.

10. What do you mean by "Empower Yourself: Monitor, Adjust, and Celebrate?"

Research unequivocally shows that you are the engine of change. If you are going to arrive at your destination, you have to know if the engine is on the right track. If you are on the right track, you need to keep the engine fueled: take responsibility for the change, identify your successful strategies, envision the future, celebrate the new you without the problem, and perhaps give something back to others. If you are not on the right track-the change you desire is not happening-then it is time to consider switching tracks. WRWY helps readers to monitor their change plan. Why is this important? Because we know that regardless of the approach taken, the general way that change occurs is highly predictable. Contrary to popular belief, studies of how people change in therapy have consistently found that it occurs earlier rather than later. As a general rule, if change is going to happen, you will likely feel some relief from your concerns in relatively short order. And, importantly, an absence of early improvement may substantially decrease the chances of achieving your goals with your current methods. Studies have also found that clients whose therapists had access to progress information, like that provided by the progress tool in WRWY, were twice as likely to achieve a clinically significant change. These are amazing, if not, revolutionary results-nothing else in the history of psychotherapy has been shown to increase effectiveness this much! WRWY brings this innovation to the reader.

11. Does this really work for serious problems?

Some might say that WRWY is Pollyannaish-that the ideas and methods are overly optimistic and the examples are too good to be true. People with real problems cannot really rally their resources to overcome life struggles, and certainly not with real "disorders." I couldn't disagree more. This criticism is one I often hear from mental health professionals mired in the Killer Ds-even when they see videotaped examples! The results are real. With over 17,000 hours of face to face work plus countless hours of phone coaching with people in all levels of distress, problems big and small, I can assure you that people, do change-quickly and dramatically, and research emphatically bears this out. That doesn't mean, of course, that change is easy. But it does mean that it is more common and possible than many would have you believe.

12. What inspired you to write this book?

My parent's unswerving support and their ability to rise from poverty, as well as my dad's resilience in bouncing back from tough life circumstances served as my primary inspiration. As a young man, with these lessons in hand, I began my training to become a psychologist. I was soon disheartened to discover that the mental health field was utterly obsessed with viewing people as mental invalids. In fact, I learned that the defining question that eclipsed all others was "What's wrong with you?" But it was more than a guiding question-it seemed to be the field's very mission to hunt down pathology-often hidden in such a way that only an expert could find it-lurking everywhere waiting to strike its hapless prey like a monster in a bad horror movie. In fact, Freud once said, "I have found little that is good about human beings. In my experience, most of them are trash." Surprising commentary from the founding parent of psychotherapy! And the field still finds little that is good about human beings. The only difference is that "trash" has been catalogued into hundreds of specific types in the professional digest of human disasters, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association. This view of people as damaged goods, hopeless victims of past trauma or their own biochemistry just didn't fit my experience. Over the years, I was delighted to discover, that this pervasive attitude didn't fit scientific research about change either. Subsequently, many memorable clients continue to inspire me and it has been my mission to impact the mental health field to see that our clients are the real heroes of change.

13. What does the Wizard of Oz have to do with all this?

The Wizard of Oz is wonderful metaphor for life and the struggle for change. The familiar tale involves four characters who perceive something missing in their lives, that something is wrong with them. Each believed that a wizard was necessary to help them find completeness. The Great and Powerful Oz did what many professional helpers are trained to do. He prescribed a protracted journey (a particular technique or medication) for them to acquire something he thought they needed. For their part, Dorothy and her companions were so focused on seizing the broomstick that they did not see how wise and heroically they acted in accomplishing the task. After his embarrassing exposure, the Humbug cleverly addresses the requests of the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion, granting each something tangible. While these awards are not exactly what each expects, they are genuinely pleased to receive validation of their experiences and desires for completeness. But as the old America song goes, "Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man, that he didn't, didn't already have." Dorothy's experience was significantly different-neither wizard nor humbug was of any service to her. But Glinda was. Glinda helped Dorothy to find her own meaning about her perilous quest to Oz, her journey of change, and rely on her own resources to return home. WRWY encourages readers to find their own meanings, and shows them how to discover their inherent abilities to solve life challenges. Although WRWY does not provide a magic wand or enable readers to travel in a bubble, it will help them to know that they always walk into tough life circumstances with (or even on in Dorothy's case) all they need to prevail over adversity.